Choreographing Your Combinations

Monday night's class was pretty straight forward... work combinations that make sense. Once you’re at a level where you know all of your combatives and defenses, you then have to know how to put them into some sensible order of attack/counterattack. “Fights are not won by individual techniques but by combinations.”

Except for the last drill of the night, most of the drills were choreographed.

The first drill started with no contact.

1. Partner throws a left jab.
2. You defend with an inside defense.
3. You throw a left hook.
4. Partner defends by covering.

We also did… what I’d call… an observation drill. Now we have boxing gloves, headgear and shin guards on. You’re in a fighting stance and your partner is hitting you. He’s concentrating on hitting vulnerable targets and throwing combinations and then spinning off. You… on the other hand… are observing his strikes and visualizing your defenses for them.

Another choreographed drill added the kicking element into the mix.

1. Partner throws a left jab.
2. You defend with an inside defense.
3. You throw a left hook.
4. Partner defends by covering.
5. Partner throws a right round kick.
6. You defend with a shin block.

As the class went on, we progressed into longer chains.

The last drill was unique. Both you and your partner could punch… but only with your left hand. However, you could defend with both hands. Being relegated to punching with one hand made you focus on what targets were available with that hand.

Choreographed chain drills are a great learning tool. The chain drills help you recognize the strikes coming at you. They also help you with reacting, defending and countering them thus building muscle memory. The punches and kicks are real… but arranged.

Ernie Kirk’s Self-Protection Seminar

Saturday’s seminar was excellent. Ernie Kirk covered a lot of material in four hours. His anecdotes about being a bouncer at various venues were humorous and at the same time enlightening.

After starting the class off with some unique warm-up exercises, we went right into the various self-protection drills.

One drill involved reacting to your partner grabbing your wrist either passively or aggressively. If your partner grabbed your wrist passively, you might react by using a wrist release technique. After all, an elderly woman may grab your wrist to get your attention. However, if your partner grabbed your wrist aggressively, you might stiff arm him in the chest or throw a punch.

The aforementioned drill was followed by a drill whereby the entire class walked around the room. If someone grabbed your wrist, you had to be sensitive to the grab and react accordingly. A little bit later in this drill, it was announced that someone was carrying a knife.

Another drill had your partner wearing focus mitts. Whichever direction you moved, he had to follow (shadow) you. Picture a NFL football game with a defensive cornerback shadowing an offensive wide receiver. At some point, you turned and punched the focus mitts.

Later, this drill was changed to you shadowing your partner and at some point, he turned and attacked you with a knife.

We also did some triggering drills whereby you had to make a decision as to when you would strike your partner. The strike could be based on his aggressive movement toward you or a movement that was interpreted as reaching for a weapon.

The close quarter short range punching drills were great. Ernie explained the importance of moving your hip first to generate power. He used examples of how one generates power by swinging a baseball bat or a golf club. We practiced some close quarter short range punching by doing some hockey-style fighting with focus mitts.

Ernie talked about the four techniques often used by attackers, especially muggers and rapists, in preparing victims for attack. They’re known as The Four ‘D’s – dialogue, deception, distraction and destruction. According to the book by Geoff Thompson, “Dead or Alive: The Choice is Yours”, they’re the most important element of self-protection to be aware of.

Dialogue designed to disarm and distract the targeted victim is the professional attacker’s most common priming technique. His objective is to make you think about his question, so that you do not notice the weapon he is drawing or his accomplice coming round behind you.

An attacker uses deception to make himself appear harmless. Do not expect dangerous people to stand out in a crowd.

Distraction is a part of deception and usually comes through dialogue. The attacker may ask his victim a question and then initiate attack while the victim is thinking about the answer.

Destruction – Few people survive the first physical blow and most are out of the game before they even realise that they are in it.

Even trained martial artists often get suckered by the four ‘D’s because these do not appear on their training curriculum. The attacker uses the techniques of deception and distraction to prime a victim that is only trained in ‘physical response’.

As I stated in the beginning, the seminar was excellent and there was a lot of material covered in four hours... too much to cover in a blog. The bottom line is… don't underestimate an attacker. There are some diabolical and sociopathic predators out there. Stay alert… stay alive!

Let’s Get Ready to Rumble

If you see a group of individuals walking toward you and they appear to be malcontents (you have that gut feeling), you should try to avoid them. If, on the other hand, you’re on the opposite side of the street and the group crosses the street to engage you, “Let’s get ready to rumble.”

Last night’s class dealt with moving through a crowd. We started the class off with creating a human circle and then trying to walk from one end of the circle to the other without making contact with anyone. After doing that a few times, we walked from one end of the circle to the other making contact. We were told that this was a sensitivity drill.

Next, after breaking the class up into two groups, we did a walk-though exercise. Each person in each group, except for one, held a kicking shield. The group walked toward the person without the kicking shield as a solid unit. The person without the kicking shield had to walk through this group.

Our next exercise was similar to the last one except there were no kicking shields. In addition, as you walked through the group, someone grabbed you by the wrist. You were expected to use a wrist release technique and move yourself to a position where you had full view of the entire group with no one behind you.

We continued with exercises that had someone from the group attempt to sucker punch you and when someone from the group comes up to you asking a question in a threatening manner.

The class ended with an exercise with you surrounded by five individuals. Three individuals held Tombstone pads and the other two held kicking shields. The first person in the group that moved acted as a trigger for you to strike. You had to punch or kick three individuals and then move away from the group.

One of the psychological responses to these kinds of situations is tunnel vision.

Peripheral vision is impaired or entirely absent…. It takes an act of will to see anything outside of this field of vision. As far as survival instincts go, tunnel vision is beneficial because it focuses the mind on the immediate threat. However, it can be a problem if you’re dealing with multiple attackers or an unpredictable environment.

The bottom line here is… the way you train is the way you react. You have to put yourself through these kinds of scenarios if you hope to survive in the street.

Learning by Trial and Error

Our Krav Maga training center’s groundfighting night has been up and running for over two months. The class was started to augment the existing Krav Maga groundfighting curriculum.

After two months of training, I can definitely see a big difference between how students are rolling (wrestling) now and when they first began. Students that were easy to overpower and submit are a lot wiser now and aren’t making the same beginner mistakes.

So... as is the norm... we reviewed techniques from the previous classes before moving on to the newer material. I was surprised to see how many attacking techniques had been learned by the students for the closed guard position. Attacks learned thus far are the straight armbar, Kimura armbar, triangle choke and guillotine choke.

The American psychologist, Edward Thorndike, specified three conditions that maximize learning. One condition is the “Law of Exercise.” This law stated that “stimulus-response associations are strengthened through repetition.” In the Law of Exercise he wrote, “We learn by doing. We forget by not doing, although to a small extent only.” Further, in his theory of learning, he wrote that “the most basic form of learning is trial and error learning.”

So... as is also the norm... we ended the night with the Litmus Test... free rolling. It’s always great to see everyone trying to execute the armbars, chokes and sweeps they’ve learned―over the past several weeks―on resisting opponents.

Don’t Get Bogged Down With Techniques

I found the following on a forum today:

“I was thinking over knife attacks and I can't think of an effective Krav counter for this one - The attacker holds the knife in the oriental hold, but instead of stabbing upward he twists the knife to attack the side of the rib cage.”

You’re not going to be able to go to “the book” and find a technique for every particular situation. That’s why Krav Maga is a system of principles and not techniques. "Krav Maga training focuses on principles rather than techniques because no two attacks are ever the same."

Anytime you’re involved in a confrontation, look at it like a pool game (pocket billiards). Every time you shoot a game of pool, the balls are not going to line up the same way. You’re going to make shots that you have probably never made before. The shots may look the same, but they are off just a fraction of an inch. As in pool, you need to understand the underlining principles. Then you’ll be able to improvise like a Jazz musician and suit the scene perfectly.

Television and Movie Assault Scenes

Have you ever watched a television or movie scene involving some sort of assault and wondered how you’d handle it? Some solutions to the assaults are cut and dry for the Kravist, others take a little more thought.

There was a scene from the television series 24 the other night where Jack Bauer put a choke hold on FBI agent Renee Walker. He said to her, “Don’t fight it” as she started to lose consciousness. Agent Walker was trying to pull her firearm from its holster while at the same time she was being choked unconscious.

Friday night I watched the television show Flashpoint. On that show, a woman kidnaps another woman whom she suspects of having an affair with her husband. There was a scene where the kidnapper holds a chef’s knife to the throat of the hostage from behind.

The beauty of Krav Maga is that one technique can be used to defend against different types of attacks. In this particular scenario, the defense is based on the fundamental Krav Maga technique of releasing yourself from an arm bar choke from behind.

So, the next time you’re watching a movie or television show with some assault scenes, exercise your Kravist mind and decide how you’d handle the situation.

Building Confidence on the Ground as a Kravist

As a Krav Maga practitioner, I am not advocating that you get so good at ground fighting that you are qualified to enter the Abu Dhabi World Championship. I am saying that you should know enough about ground fighting ― so that if you find yourself on the ground ― you don’t feel like a fish out of water or in another dimension.

Think for a minute and analyze your strengths and weaknesses in Krav Maga. Which do you feel more confident defending against, a front choke from a 250 pounds powerlifter-type attacker or a 250 pounds powerlifter-type attacker mounted on top of you ready to put your lights out? Should you be more efficient at plucking the attacker’s choke hold than you are at trapping and rolling the attacker?

The only way to build up confidence on the ground is to practice there by free rolling and scenario-based training. Practicing with someone that is within your weight range is a good starting point for feeling comfortable. However, ultimately, you’ll want to practice your techniques against your worst nightmare, the behemoth.

Tip: There are only two places that you want your attacker to be when you’re on the ground and he’s on top of you. The first place is at a distance that he can’t strike you. The second place is where he’s so close to you that his punches are ineffectual or at the very least less damaging. If the attacker is somewhere between those two places, you’re going to get hurt.

The bottom line is give as much weight to your Krav Maga ground fighting skills as you do to your Krav Maga standup skills. In a street scenario, you don’t know where you’re going to end up fighting for your life.